Thoughts 1.2: And He Dared To Feel
A long time ago, when I was much newer to this fandom and LiveJournal was something I'd never even heard of, I read a fic that portrayed Ianto as a cancer survivor. The author stated in their notes that they were working from personal experience, although, once I read the fic, it was painfully obvious this note was unnecessary. The story explained, by and large, Ianto's aversion to being touched, and connected it to a devastating, difficult illness. Without a doubt, this author was what we call "self-inserting", projecting their own life experiences onto a fanfiction story.
Why am I telling you this? Because self-insertion is the number one way authors try to connect with characters emotionally.
Self insertion can work. For some, some of the time; for some, none of the time. We are all the sum of our experiences, and some of us use those experiences in our writing. Some of us, like yours truly, can't stop using those experiences in their writing. For some, it's a coping mechanism, a way of dealing, to put our own life stories and experiences into a fic. The cancer survivor of the abovementioned story was clearly still affected by her childhood experiences, and it was a story that she, for whatever reason, needed to tell. The story worked for me because she applied it to a facet of the character that I could recognise -- her version of Ianto connected with my reading of him. It didn't make it my personal canon, but for the ten minutes or so I spent reading, I believed her.
I believed her because she was a good writer. I believed her because she didn't project herself onto Ianto beyond her experiences. I believed her because her Jack was a recognisable Jack. I believed her, because she told a story from a unique selling point: she knew what it was like to be a cancer survivor, and she explained it to me through the medium of a shared love. And that's what, in my view, fanfiction is all about.
Some of you will stop reading at this point. Some of you will think right now that I don't know what the hell I'm on about, because that's not what fanfiction is all about. And in all fairness, you are right. Fanfiction is a unique medium with a wealth of (free) products available to the masses, and each can take only that which suits their reading. If what I've just said isn't what you take away from it, you might want to hit your back button. Don't worry, I won't be offended.
Like I said, fanfiction is explanation through a shared medium, a shared canon. But it's still, also, the fundamental art of storytelling. An art that comes with its own techniques, rules, talents, and pitfalls. When I first started putting the stories in my head to paper, I often wrote about five lines before I started on something new. I rarely finished something. When I read things back, they were so poor I didn't know how to begin fixing them, and abandoned most of it. I didn't have a means to learn the art of telling stories via any other way than being self-critical (my school's curriculum did not offer creative writing in any form), and for the longest time, I wrote without direction. Eventually, I began to write fanfiction.
For me, fanfiction is a great creative outlet because it enables, far better than any other genre, the art of the short story. And I've found I have a great love of the short (fan)fiction story, because it allows me, as writer or as reader, to highlight one particular emotion, one particular scene, examine one particular facet, and so on. Being a person who's the sum of her experiences, what I will connect with or write depends on those experiences. Thus the golden rule of, "write what you know".
Write what you know is a great suggestion, but if you're like me, "what you know" encompasses a normal, boring, day-to-day life that doesn't include being attacked by cannibals or watching my girlfriend get turned into a mindless robot. So, no help there.
Actually, though, yes, there is help there. Something I will come to later. In the mean time, let's talk about that other writing tool so oft expounded, research. Research is your friend, my uni lecturers told me. Although not as succesfully as they'd have liked, they drilled into me the fundamental need to know what I need to look up, and what I already know. I'll admit that there's not much to research about the girlfriend-becoming-a-robot question, but cannibals are around, right?
Truth be told, for most of these issues, you don't need research. No, really, you don't. The human experience might be a bit far removed from cannibals for most of us, but basic emotions are not. I'm not asking you to sit back and wonder what you would feel like if someone threatened to eat you. In fact, I've done that and came up blank. I wouldn't know what it would be like, because my imagination doesn't stretch that far. But, you know, I've been in a car crash. In fact, I've been in three. Miraculously, I came away unscathed from all three. Well, when I say unscathed... I was physically unhurt. But I know what shock feels like. I'm not that big a fan of cars any more, if I ever was. And I vividly remember that shaky feeling, the fear, how the bruises felt, and what it's like to be treated by paramedics and burst out crying half way through their soothing assessment of, "you're fine, honey."
If I'd have been kidnapped, assaulted, and threatened to be eaten by cannibals, I suspect I'd feel roughly that, ten fold. So why didn't I write it like that? Because I'm me. I'm a young woman who lives in a flat and goes to dance classes for a hobby. And I get hit hard by shock, because my body is not used to adrenaline. I suspect that if I fought aliens for a living and had the abovementioned experience with the metallic girlfriend, I might not burst into tears quite that easily.
Am I explaining this simplistically? Yes, absolutely. I suspect that any writer worth his or her salt is rolling their eyes right about now. The point I'm trying to make, though, is that all writing of emotion, plot-wise (so not the technique), comes down to mixing your experiences with the character's, well, character. You need to find an 'in'. And when you've found it, you need to gather up the rest of the character, and make that fit around the 'in'.
Example, you ask? Okay, meet Ianto. He's twenty-five, probably suffers from PTSD, sleeps with his boss, spends most of his time just trying to survive. Which of these things do you connect with? None? Okay, he's 25, was straight until this guy came along, and now he doesn't even think about sexuality, his or anyone else's, because aliens keep trying to take over the world, and if he gets a moment to think, he needs to worry about keeping all the goddamn grief in and not falling apart. Whatever your reading of a character, there is a reason why you like them. A reason why they fascinate you. A reason why they are the person you'll write about. But like I've just shown, there's more to them than that one facet, that 'in'.
Say your 'in' is that he's a survivor. Always puts one foot in front of the other, doesn't look back, because there's been enough shit in his past, and looking back accomplishes nothing. Congratulations, you have an emotion to work with! Well, Ianto is still the guy sleeping with his boss, still the bloke with PTSD, still had the metallic girlfriend, still survived the end of the world multiple times. He's also still the man with the sarcastic jokes, still the man who arranges everything quietly from the background, still the guy who laughs out loud when everyone else is working. Point? You can't focus solely on your 'in'. Characters have three dimensions.
All right, you say, okay, I get it. I need to find that connection. Really, Vera, I could have figured that out myself. Now how do I tell the story? And you would be right that a story is more than throwing a set of circumstances at a character. And it's more than finding the one spot in the character that you can start from. It's about selling a premise, telling a plot, showing your reader what sexual assault/kidnapping/a bad childhood/etc did to your character, and the people around that person.
At this point, I find it difficult to explain my approach, because it isn't always the same. So instead, I'm going to work with examples of my own work. I won't force you to read them, so I'll summarise the premise, and tell you how I went about working with the emotional subject matter of each fic. The choices aren't mine, but those of the person who asked me to write this.
Fic #1 -- Disconnections
Summary: On his way to work, Ianto gets pulled over by the police. Instead of snuggling up to Jack first thing in the morning, he gets arrested.
Premise: Ianto wakes up feeling depressed. Trying to feel better (ie. see Jack), he keeps getting thwarted by the universe (ie. the evil police), and thus I, the author, get a chance to write an introspective of the character.
Approach: I'm not new to feeling depressed. I'm not a sufferer of depression per se, but I've had therapy for related issues. This was a classic case of me projecting my own issues onto a character and making myself feel better by giving Ianto a happy ending. My 'in' was that Ianto has a good reason for feeling depressed: the loss of his metallic girlfriend. The story I told was largely fictional; I've never been arrested or stopped on the road. The emotional side of the fic wasn't. In the end, I hope, I've managed to convert my experiences with feeling down into a journey for the character.
Amount of research done: nada. Police procedure is a hobby of mine, so I used what I already knew. Depressive feelings, ditto. This one came from the gut.
Fic #2 -- The Education of Ianto Jones
Summary: Ianto is, time and again, confronted with what I would call "socially accepted homophobia".
Premise: I tried to show what that does to a person, what life is like when you're in that position.
Approach: This was utterly outside of my own experience. I knew nothing about it when I conceived of the fic. I'd never been discriminated against, never had anyone call me names on basis of my (perceived) sexuality, etc. I spent a good two months writing down every bit of homophobia I saw around me, whether at family gatherings, at the office, or on television. I made lists. I wrote several drafts. I ensured the services of a beta who did have experience in this field.
Amount of research done: tons. But, I hasten to add, I didn't talk to anyone and ask them what their feelings were of being exposed to this kind of treatment. I looked for credible circumstances, then used what I knew of the character and tried to give them credible reactions. I spent some time envisioning it, used some of my own experiences with ostracism and rejection, but fundamentally, this is where I used my imagination, using the character's personality as a guide line.
Fic #3 -- Tracing Patterns
Summary: Ianto hides a part of himself from Jack. Jack sets out to find what it is.
Premise: Ianto is the child of divorced parents. His greatest fear is losing a partner because he repeats his parents' mistakes.
Approach: Contrary to what some of you might think, I am not the daughter of a divorced couple. The divorce side of the equation came from statistical evidence: the majority of marriages these days ends in divorce. It's the fear of repeating mistakes that I used from my own experiences. I wouldn't call this self insertion, although you may argue with that, because I used it as a tool to give the character credible emotions, rather than finding solace in the writing of it. As a writer, the challenge was if I could sell a Ianto who has those issues, that background, because I hadn't seen it done before and I felt it suited my reading of the character.
Amount of research done: nada, again. I know children of divorced parents, I know fear of repeating your upbringing in your adult life. I used my own natural experiences.
What do we learn from this? Well, in my opinion, that we all, or almost all, use what we know as a basis for our storytelling. Or let me rephrase, I do. Barely any story I tell comes without my own emotional experiences. I love writing about emotion, I love pushing characters beyond what we see on screen. In the discussion I ran while preparing for this meta, someone said, "I didn't set out to make Ianto cry, because so many authors already make him cry, but it was the only fitting reaction for the character." (I paraphrase.) This interested me, because I totally set out to make Ianto cry sometimes. And sometimes, I know that I can't, because Ianto is all about the holding back. But it shows that each of us come to a certain point from a different beginning; I, who set out to create the circumstances that make him bawl like a baby, and this commenter, who set out to tell a different story but found that this is a facet of this character, and had to include it. Whatever the starting point, we both arrived at the same thing, because it's part of Ianto's character.
And have you noticed I only talk about Ianto here? That's because finding an 'in' with Jack is like kicking a brick wall -- pieces might dislodge, but making a decent sized hole will break your foot first. I have far less in common with a 51st century time traveller who's in love with a man who dumped him at the first sign of trouble and then waits for him for a hundred plus years. Jack fics, in the end, always require far more research, study, and thinking on my part than Ianto fics ever do.
What did I learn from the discussion I held? Well, a few things. Obviously, that self-insertion is everywhere. Also, that readers definitely care, and can tell, when you have or haven't done your homework. When I say homework, I mean not just research, but thinking about a character's credible responses, the scenario you've put them in, etc.
Research, while a good starting point, is not the be-all and end-all of writing. You can't tick the boxes on the emotional responses list to any given trauma and expect people to buy your story. You need more. You need that connection, that understanding. You need to let what you've learned percolate, and find an 'in' with the trauma as much as the character. Or you will fail. I would love to write a fic about, say, torture, but writing a credible torture survivor is probably beyond my ken. Because, let me just point out, after torture, it'll never be okay again. So the platitudes won't work. That said, whatever topic you choose, make sure you do know the basics of it. You can't write about, say, anorexia if you have no personal experience and no technical knowledge of it. Read up on your subject if it's outside of your field of expertise. But don't use your research as the step by step guide for your story.
Betas are your friend. The more the merrier, if you need to. Find people who are honest with you, who will tell you that you need to sell something more, or that your character's emotional response is too soon, too much, or too aggressive. It was my beta who saved me from spiralling the divorce fic into domestic violence. She pointed out that Jack doesn't hit people. When I looked at canon, I realised she was right. So Jack hit an object instead. Because, canonically, that's his emotional response. I'd gone for the stereotype, I'd failed to stick close enough to the character. And I was set right, before I made a fool of myself on the interwebz.
Leave things open to the interpretation of the reader. When you write emotion, stick to the all important rule of show, don't tell. Don't tell the reader that Jack cries because he's missing Ianto, show them how a memory of Ianto is triggered, by having him stare at the empty coffee mug on his desk and having tears slide down his cheeks that he wipes away abruptly. It allows the reader to fill in their own view of how Jack came to this point, and what emotions he's feeling. It's the exact same thing, remember, that the actors and directors show us on screen. Sticking close to that is hugely important when writing emotion. You can't dictate the reader to feel a certain emotion with Jack, you can only tell them what Jack does, and let them infer what Jack feels from that. They will connect better with the character.
Last thoughts from yours truly? Emotions are delicate things. They require a delicate touch. When I write fic, I have my twu wuv fluff moments. And the moments where Jack and Ianto start explaining everything they feel, like two women, or a straight couple. And I find myself backtracking. I stick with the emotion, but I don't articulate it. I have a look instead, a touch, a memory, a tone of voice. Communication training, many years ago, taught me that something like sixty percent of all communication is non-verbal. When your plot revolves around how people feel, you need a delicate touch. Be gentle with your characters. There's more power in someone's fingers shaking sometimes than there'll be in, "I'm scared." That said, for some characters (oh hai, Jack Harkness), saying it aloud is the harder of the two by far. And it's up to you, the author, the storyteller, to find the emotional response that suits the character, and sell it to me, the reader.
--
Sources: With much gratitude to all the authors, readers, and interested parties who commented on the discussion page, as well as those of you at the Torchwood Writers' Union who encouraged the writing of this meta. Also, gratitude and teeth grinding in the direction of blue_fjords, who conceived and facilitated this idea. Owing, at least in part and in inspiration, to antelope_writes' Body Language metas and the hugely important Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (and That's Okay), by Merlin Missy. I do not claim to know everything. I don't claim that everyone needs to do what I do, or that I do it right. If you want to laugh at me, you may.
Why am I telling you this? Because self-insertion is the number one way authors try to connect with characters emotionally.
Self insertion can work. For some, some of the time; for some, none of the time. We are all the sum of our experiences, and some of us use those experiences in our writing. Some of us, like yours truly, can't stop using those experiences in their writing. For some, it's a coping mechanism, a way of dealing, to put our own life stories and experiences into a fic. The cancer survivor of the abovementioned story was clearly still affected by her childhood experiences, and it was a story that she, for whatever reason, needed to tell. The story worked for me because she applied it to a facet of the character that I could recognise -- her version of Ianto connected with my reading of him. It didn't make it my personal canon, but for the ten minutes or so I spent reading, I believed her.
I believed her because she was a good writer. I believed her because she didn't project herself onto Ianto beyond her experiences. I believed her because her Jack was a recognisable Jack. I believed her, because she told a story from a unique selling point: she knew what it was like to be a cancer survivor, and she explained it to me through the medium of a shared love. And that's what, in my view, fanfiction is all about.
Some of you will stop reading at this point. Some of you will think right now that I don't know what the hell I'm on about, because that's not what fanfiction is all about. And in all fairness, you are right. Fanfiction is a unique medium with a wealth of (free) products available to the masses, and each can take only that which suits their reading. If what I've just said isn't what you take away from it, you might want to hit your back button. Don't worry, I won't be offended.
Like I said, fanfiction is explanation through a shared medium, a shared canon. But it's still, also, the fundamental art of storytelling. An art that comes with its own techniques, rules, talents, and pitfalls. When I first started putting the stories in my head to paper, I often wrote about five lines before I started on something new. I rarely finished something. When I read things back, they were so poor I didn't know how to begin fixing them, and abandoned most of it. I didn't have a means to learn the art of telling stories via any other way than being self-critical (my school's curriculum did not offer creative writing in any form), and for the longest time, I wrote without direction. Eventually, I began to write fanfiction.
For me, fanfiction is a great creative outlet because it enables, far better than any other genre, the art of the short story. And I've found I have a great love of the short (fan)fiction story, because it allows me, as writer or as reader, to highlight one particular emotion, one particular scene, examine one particular facet, and so on. Being a person who's the sum of her experiences, what I will connect with or write depends on those experiences. Thus the golden rule of, "write what you know".
Write what you know is a great suggestion, but if you're like me, "what you know" encompasses a normal, boring, day-to-day life that doesn't include being attacked by cannibals or watching my girlfriend get turned into a mindless robot. So, no help there.
Actually, though, yes, there is help there. Something I will come to later. In the mean time, let's talk about that other writing tool so oft expounded, research. Research is your friend, my uni lecturers told me. Although not as succesfully as they'd have liked, they drilled into me the fundamental need to know what I need to look up, and what I already know. I'll admit that there's not much to research about the girlfriend-becoming-a-robot question, but cannibals are around, right?
Truth be told, for most of these issues, you don't need research. No, really, you don't. The human experience might be a bit far removed from cannibals for most of us, but basic emotions are not. I'm not asking you to sit back and wonder what you would feel like if someone threatened to eat you. In fact, I've done that and came up blank. I wouldn't know what it would be like, because my imagination doesn't stretch that far. But, you know, I've been in a car crash. In fact, I've been in three. Miraculously, I came away unscathed from all three. Well, when I say unscathed... I was physically unhurt. But I know what shock feels like. I'm not that big a fan of cars any more, if I ever was. And I vividly remember that shaky feeling, the fear, how the bruises felt, and what it's like to be treated by paramedics and burst out crying half way through their soothing assessment of, "you're fine, honey."
If I'd have been kidnapped, assaulted, and threatened to be eaten by cannibals, I suspect I'd feel roughly that, ten fold. So why didn't I write it like that? Because I'm me. I'm a young woman who lives in a flat and goes to dance classes for a hobby. And I get hit hard by shock, because my body is not used to adrenaline. I suspect that if I fought aliens for a living and had the abovementioned experience with the metallic girlfriend, I might not burst into tears quite that easily.
Am I explaining this simplistically? Yes, absolutely. I suspect that any writer worth his or her salt is rolling their eyes right about now. The point I'm trying to make, though, is that all writing of emotion, plot-wise (so not the technique), comes down to mixing your experiences with the character's, well, character. You need to find an 'in'. And when you've found it, you need to gather up the rest of the character, and make that fit around the 'in'.
Example, you ask? Okay, meet Ianto. He's twenty-five, probably suffers from PTSD, sleeps with his boss, spends most of his time just trying to survive. Which of these things do you connect with? None? Okay, he's 25, was straight until this guy came along, and now he doesn't even think about sexuality, his or anyone else's, because aliens keep trying to take over the world, and if he gets a moment to think, he needs to worry about keeping all the goddamn grief in and not falling apart. Whatever your reading of a character, there is a reason why you like them. A reason why they fascinate you. A reason why they are the person you'll write about. But like I've just shown, there's more to them than that one facet, that 'in'.
Say your 'in' is that he's a survivor. Always puts one foot in front of the other, doesn't look back, because there's been enough shit in his past, and looking back accomplishes nothing. Congratulations, you have an emotion to work with! Well, Ianto is still the guy sleeping with his boss, still the bloke with PTSD, still had the metallic girlfriend, still survived the end of the world multiple times. He's also still the man with the sarcastic jokes, still the man who arranges everything quietly from the background, still the guy who laughs out loud when everyone else is working. Point? You can't focus solely on your 'in'. Characters have three dimensions.
All right, you say, okay, I get it. I need to find that connection. Really, Vera, I could have figured that out myself. Now how do I tell the story? And you would be right that a story is more than throwing a set of circumstances at a character. And it's more than finding the one spot in the character that you can start from. It's about selling a premise, telling a plot, showing your reader what sexual assault/kidnapping/a bad childhood/etc did to your character, and the people around that person.
At this point, I find it difficult to explain my approach, because it isn't always the same. So instead, I'm going to work with examples of my own work. I won't force you to read them, so I'll summarise the premise, and tell you how I went about working with the emotional subject matter of each fic. The choices aren't mine, but those of the person who asked me to write this.
Fic #1 -- Disconnections
Summary: On his way to work, Ianto gets pulled over by the police. Instead of snuggling up to Jack first thing in the morning, he gets arrested.
Premise: Ianto wakes up feeling depressed. Trying to feel better (ie. see Jack), he keeps getting thwarted by the universe (ie. the evil police), and thus I, the author, get a chance to write an introspective of the character.
Approach: I'm not new to feeling depressed. I'm not a sufferer of depression per se, but I've had therapy for related issues. This was a classic case of me projecting my own issues onto a character and making myself feel better by giving Ianto a happy ending. My 'in' was that Ianto has a good reason for feeling depressed: the loss of his metallic girlfriend. The story I told was largely fictional; I've never been arrested or stopped on the road. The emotional side of the fic wasn't. In the end, I hope, I've managed to convert my experiences with feeling down into a journey for the character.
Amount of research done: nada. Police procedure is a hobby of mine, so I used what I already knew. Depressive feelings, ditto. This one came from the gut.
Fic #2 -- The Education of Ianto Jones
Summary: Ianto is, time and again, confronted with what I would call "socially accepted homophobia".
Premise: I tried to show what that does to a person, what life is like when you're in that position.
Approach: This was utterly outside of my own experience. I knew nothing about it when I conceived of the fic. I'd never been discriminated against, never had anyone call me names on basis of my (perceived) sexuality, etc. I spent a good two months writing down every bit of homophobia I saw around me, whether at family gatherings, at the office, or on television. I made lists. I wrote several drafts. I ensured the services of a beta who did have experience in this field.
Amount of research done: tons. But, I hasten to add, I didn't talk to anyone and ask them what their feelings were of being exposed to this kind of treatment. I looked for credible circumstances, then used what I knew of the character and tried to give them credible reactions. I spent some time envisioning it, used some of my own experiences with ostracism and rejection, but fundamentally, this is where I used my imagination, using the character's personality as a guide line.
Fic #3 -- Tracing Patterns
Summary: Ianto hides a part of himself from Jack. Jack sets out to find what it is.
Premise: Ianto is the child of divorced parents. His greatest fear is losing a partner because he repeats his parents' mistakes.
Approach: Contrary to what some of you might think, I am not the daughter of a divorced couple. The divorce side of the equation came from statistical evidence: the majority of marriages these days ends in divorce. It's the fear of repeating mistakes that I used from my own experiences. I wouldn't call this self insertion, although you may argue with that, because I used it as a tool to give the character credible emotions, rather than finding solace in the writing of it. As a writer, the challenge was if I could sell a Ianto who has those issues, that background, because I hadn't seen it done before and I felt it suited my reading of the character.
Amount of research done: nada, again. I know children of divorced parents, I know fear of repeating your upbringing in your adult life. I used my own natural experiences.
What do we learn from this? Well, in my opinion, that we all, or almost all, use what we know as a basis for our storytelling. Or let me rephrase, I do. Barely any story I tell comes without my own emotional experiences. I love writing about emotion, I love pushing characters beyond what we see on screen. In the discussion I ran while preparing for this meta, someone said, "I didn't set out to make Ianto cry, because so many authors already make him cry, but it was the only fitting reaction for the character." (I paraphrase.) This interested me, because I totally set out to make Ianto cry sometimes. And sometimes, I know that I can't, because Ianto is all about the holding back. But it shows that each of us come to a certain point from a different beginning; I, who set out to create the circumstances that make him bawl like a baby, and this commenter, who set out to tell a different story but found that this is a facet of this character, and had to include it. Whatever the starting point, we both arrived at the same thing, because it's part of Ianto's character.
And have you noticed I only talk about Ianto here? That's because finding an 'in' with Jack is like kicking a brick wall -- pieces might dislodge, but making a decent sized hole will break your foot first. I have far less in common with a 51st century time traveller who's in love with a man who dumped him at the first sign of trouble and then waits for him for a hundred plus years. Jack fics, in the end, always require far more research, study, and thinking on my part than Ianto fics ever do.
What did I learn from the discussion I held? Well, a few things. Obviously, that self-insertion is everywhere. Also, that readers definitely care, and can tell, when you have or haven't done your homework. When I say homework, I mean not just research, but thinking about a character's credible responses, the scenario you've put them in, etc.
Research, while a good starting point, is not the be-all and end-all of writing. You can't tick the boxes on the emotional responses list to any given trauma and expect people to buy your story. You need more. You need that connection, that understanding. You need to let what you've learned percolate, and find an 'in' with the trauma as much as the character. Or you will fail. I would love to write a fic about, say, torture, but writing a credible torture survivor is probably beyond my ken. Because, let me just point out, after torture, it'll never be okay again. So the platitudes won't work. That said, whatever topic you choose, make sure you do know the basics of it. You can't write about, say, anorexia if you have no personal experience and no technical knowledge of it. Read up on your subject if it's outside of your field of expertise. But don't use your research as the step by step guide for your story.
Betas are your friend. The more the merrier, if you need to. Find people who are honest with you, who will tell you that you need to sell something more, or that your character's emotional response is too soon, too much, or too aggressive. It was my beta who saved me from spiralling the divorce fic into domestic violence. She pointed out that Jack doesn't hit people. When I looked at canon, I realised she was right. So Jack hit an object instead. Because, canonically, that's his emotional response. I'd gone for the stereotype, I'd failed to stick close enough to the character. And I was set right, before I made a fool of myself on the interwebz.
Leave things open to the interpretation of the reader. When you write emotion, stick to the all important rule of show, don't tell. Don't tell the reader that Jack cries because he's missing Ianto, show them how a memory of Ianto is triggered, by having him stare at the empty coffee mug on his desk and having tears slide down his cheeks that he wipes away abruptly. It allows the reader to fill in their own view of how Jack came to this point, and what emotions he's feeling. It's the exact same thing, remember, that the actors and directors show us on screen. Sticking close to that is hugely important when writing emotion. You can't dictate the reader to feel a certain emotion with Jack, you can only tell them what Jack does, and let them infer what Jack feels from that. They will connect better with the character.
Last thoughts from yours truly? Emotions are delicate things. They require a delicate touch. When I write fic, I have my twu wuv fluff moments. And the moments where Jack and Ianto start explaining everything they feel, like two women, or a straight couple. And I find myself backtracking. I stick with the emotion, but I don't articulate it. I have a look instead, a touch, a memory, a tone of voice. Communication training, many years ago, taught me that something like sixty percent of all communication is non-verbal. When your plot revolves around how people feel, you need a delicate touch. Be gentle with your characters. There's more power in someone's fingers shaking sometimes than there'll be in, "I'm scared." That said, for some characters (oh hai, Jack Harkness), saying it aloud is the harder of the two by far. And it's up to you, the author, the storyteller, to find the emotional response that suits the character, and sell it to me, the reader.
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Sources: With much gratitude to all the authors, readers, and interested parties who commented on the discussion page, as well as those of you at the Torchwood Writers' Union who encouraged the writing of this meta. Also, gratitude and teeth grinding in the direction of blue_fjords, who conceived and facilitated this idea. Owing, at least in part and in inspiration, to antelope_writes' Body Language metas and the hugely important Your Friends Are Not Watching the Same Show You Are (and That's Okay), by Merlin Missy. I do not claim to know everything. I don't claim that everyone needs to do what I do, or that I do it right. If you want to laugh at me, you may.